Colombia launches peace talks with rebel ELN

Colombia launches peace talks with rebel ELN
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

BOGOTA, JUNE 7: The Colombian government announced late on Tuesday that it had formally launched a peace process with the second largest guerrilla group in the country, the National Liberation Army (ELN).

In a statement, the administration of President Andres Pastrana said it had restored the group's political status, after withdrawing that status last year. "It is the first step from a legal point of view in giving a formal start to the peace process with the ELN," the statement said.

Pastrana's administration had removed the ELN's political status in April 1999 after its members hijacked a plane and held 41 passengers hostage. All but six of the hostages have been released.

Camilo Gomez, the country's high commissioner for peace in charge of peace talks with rebel groups, said the government would "formalise" ongoing contacts between rebel and government representatives "and launch in earnest the stages of dialogue and negotiation."

The Colombian government is already engaged in peace talks with the country's largest Marxist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The FARC, with some 15,000 members, controls a demilitarised zone about the size of Switzerland, and the ELN, which claims 5,000 members, also wants to control a demilitarised zone before it starts peace negotiations.

As a condition to holding peace talks with the government, the ELN had also demanded that a peace convention be held between the government, rebel leaders and a cross-section of Colombian society, inside the demilitarised zone. In late April, Pastrana announced he would demilitarise three municipalities in the north and northeast for the ELN, but the inhabitants of some 20 towns and villages in the area protested the move by going on strike and blocking roads.

The protest, which the ELN said was instigated by right-wing paramilitary groups, ended after 23 days on Thursday when the government promised to consult with local inhabitants before any Army troops or police are withdrawn. The townspeople, however, continue to oppose the demilitarisation of their region, some 600 kilometers north of here, claiming that under ELN control kidnappings, crime and rebel-paramilitary combats would be on the rise.

In late May, a leader of a far right-wing paramilitary group that operates near Colombia's border with Venezuela, offered to withdraw his combatants from four area villages to ease peace talks between the government and the ELN. However, "Comandante Camilo" added that the Self-Defense Units of Colombia (AUC) -- an umbrella association of right-wing paramilitaries -- were against the government's decision to demilitarise three municipalities in the Bolivar and Antioquia departments.

The civil war in Colombia, pitting both the FARC and the ELN against right-wing paramilitaries and the government, has claimed more than 1,20,000 lives since 1964 and driven more than two million people from their homes.